Also, PLEASE, give more feedback to people on how to unlock something (sources), took me several plays to unlock "Pear Trees" (VITAL RESOURCE for food before orange kicks in) and I had no idea how to unlock it. If it didn't unlock soon it would severely hamper my will to play - not knowing what I should do to unlock it.

Caiobrz wrote:
Also, PLEASE, give more feedback to people on how to unlock something (sources), took me several plays to unlock "Pear Trees" (VITAL RESOURCE for food before orange kicks in) and I had no idea how to unlock it. If it didn't unlock soon it would severely hamper my will to play - not knowing what I should do to unlock it.

I've been struggling with that too (a tooltip in the unlocks menu would be great), but in the meantime, the Developments page on the wiki is getting close to completion and you can use that if you sort it on the Unlocks column.

Hmm...how about an additional game mode, in addition to Era and Free Play (which would then remain unchanged): You start with every unlockable resource being locked, and to unlock the resources for that game you need to achieve the goals required to unlock it in that very same game.

As you start without any unlockables whatsoever, you're at a clear disadvantage compared to Era and Free Play, but at the same time it allows you to play with every unlockable resource there is. It also doubles as an additional challenge to all players: reach as many goals as you can (or try for ALL of them) in a single session without a time limit. Bonus points for competitive play if it also marks the game time it took you to reach each goal, so competitive players can try to reach level 2/level 3/all goals/a specific goal as quickly as possible and compare their times.

I voted yes, as this would improve freeplay a lot. But I liked VDZ's idea of a challenge mode, where you start with nothing and, as you unlock new Sources you can use them right away. But to make it a real challenge, add a loss condition. Maybe the player could choose, or maybe it would be random, but here are some ideas.

You lose if (only one of these would be active per session):
* More than X villages are destroyed.
* More than X projects aren't completed.
* X villages reach maximum greed.

VDZ wrote:Hmm...how about an additional game mode, in addition to Era and Free Play (which would then remain unchanged): You start with every unlockable resource being locked, and to unlock the resources for that game you need to achieve the goals required to unlock it in that very same game.

As you start without any unlockables whatsoever, you're at a clear disadvantage compared to Era and Free Play, but at the same time it allows you to play with every unlockable resource there is. It also doubles as an additional challenge to all players: reach as many goals as you can (or try for ALL of them) in a single session without a time limit. Bonus points for competitive play if it also marks the game time it took you to reach each goal, so competitive players can try to reach level 2/level 3/all goals/a specific goal as quickly as possible and compare their times.

This is a really nifty idea.

Might be hard to implement though, they would probably need a separate way to keep track of unlocks, make a system that checks unlocks in real time, some kind of visual way to notify you of an unlock.

But calling it challenge mode would be self-defeating, the initial purpose was to better appeal to people who prefer a more casual play-style. I'd sooner call it 'progression-mode' or something. If something like that existed, it would have made my first play more fun. Although I wonder if I would have ever switched to the eras, which are kind of growing on me. I think there's something to be said for 'forcing' era type play.

Why not instead have a 'complete-free-play' mode, where you play with everything unlocked, but without unlocking it for any other mode? I would have loved that.

It would allow you to play the full game without going through the unlocking process, something you sometimes just want to do. Then if you're completionist, you can go after the unlocking and discover the fun of playing in eras.

Dunam wrote:Might be hard to implement though, they would probably need a separate way to keep track of unlocks, make a system that checks unlocks in real time, some kind of visual way to notify you of an unlock.

Looks to me like a matter of writing an alternative to GlobalLockManager, calling EndGameUnlock.Check() during the game instead of only at the end, and and perhaps altering Unlockable.Unlock() a bit in the code to show a notice. Reus seems to be built in a very dynamic way, so it shouldn't be all that complicated.

Dunam wrote:But calling it challenge mode would be self-defeating, the initial purpose was to better appeal to people who prefer a more casual play-style. I'd sooner call it 'progression-mode' or something.

But I never called it a challenge mode; I fully agree with you in that it should be a mode where you can just take it easy with no pressure, but there are still goals to work towards.

Dunam wrote:Why not instead have a 'complete-free-play' mode, where you play with everything unlocked, but without unlocking it for any other mode? I would have loved that.

Although I'm clearly on the 'yes' side of the debate, I must say that that WOULD ruin the value of unlocks. Being able to play completely freely with everything unlocked from the start is pretty much what you're working towards by completing all of the goals.

How about making where you progress in Freeplay Mode an Unlock itself. This way it would function much like the later Eras do. Say if they get 50 out of the current 67 achievements then they unlock the option to play in this new Freeplay mode. That way people still have to do unlocks but they don't need to get every last challenge to see all the game's content?

Also when it comes to alternative modes of play for freeplay and Era, that the Devs hinted are coming, I think it would be cool to do the same with them. Either have specific challenges that unlock those additional modes are just have them based on some total number of unlocks thus far. Though I think specific challenges would be a more interesting route.